Celebrating the Now!

It is a contemplative morning heading into what I am certain will be a contemplative day. So this morning I broke the routine and after coffee at the Breakfast Club (where the inmates were celebrating last night's election results) I decided to skip the run and take Goddess for a long walk. She goes bonkers whenever I do this jumping and dancing and making happy groaning noises. Then she grabs the end of the lease in her mouth and darts down the stairs and waits on me to arrive at the door.

I love mornings and today's was a beauty. The rising sun painted the marsh golden. Wisps of fog hung over it against a backdrop of bright blue sky. The lighthouse stood guard over it all and I didn't mind that Goddess was taking her sweet time sniffing this and that.

After a morning meeting, I am heading into a staff retreat. We normally do this every year so that we can review our performance last year, establish goals and standards for the coming year, celebrate our accomplishments and plan for the emerging issues.

We missed doing this last year because of trauma that Union Mission experienced, but now we are back to normal. Whatever normal is?

I guess that I am in this frame of mind because of how different things are today than they were two years ago. Much of the leadership that was in place then will be present today. What is different is that we have radically expanded that leadership so there will be many new voices present once we commence. That part is exciting.

I am not a big fan of the past. I tip toe through it from time to time but never for very long. O, I have a trunk load of stories from back then but they are mostly used to describe how I got here as the person I am now or to illustrate something we are trying to achieve.

"According to my watch, the time is now, the past is dead and gone," says Jimmy Buffett and I actually have a watch in my office that my friend Terry Ball made for me. He scraped the numbers off of its face and painted the word "NOW" on it. It is one of my favorite gifts that anyone has ever given me.

So today, I am celebrating the now! Because it is really all that we are sure that we have.